King Arthur in America by Alan Lupack and Barbara Tepa Lupack (review)

H^arthuriana search both for human reality and God have their origin. He suggests that for Chaucer poetic language always leads to confusion, ambiguity, and ambivalence, whereas Langland claimed poetry as the ultimate source to reach absolute truth (203), or salvation (209). Nevertheless, this very claim and Langland's ardent desire to search for this truth through his texts might be a curious indicator ofhow much he actually failed and never achieved his goal—and in this sense came close to the same realization as Chaucer when he composed, for instance, his Troilus and Criseyde (220). The reader wonders about the conclusions presented here because the investigation of selfhood, authorship, and hence of individuality is increasingly set aside in favor ofa study ofwhat literary language can do to establish truth and to create knowledge. Kimmelman suggests that the poetic realization of the power of the wtitten work also implies that, beginning with the twelfth century, poets saw themselves as 'makers' ofthe world and as those who defined the world with their language (232). The poet's persona emerges, as the author states (234), as the carrier of truth, which by itself sounds quite plausible, yet also somewhat speculative and also uncertain in the theoretical foundation. Unfortunately, in the long run Kimmelman's concept does not essentially contribute to a full understanding ofthe concept of 'authorship' and the 'modern literary persona.' The book's small print makes it hard to read, and the bibliography proves to be incomplete at times. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating interdisciplinary study which attempts to link the philosophical with the literary discourse ofthe late Middle Ages and challenges our traditional notion ofwhat the written word was intended for in intellectual circles. ALBRECHT CLASSEN University ofArizona alan lupack and barbara tepa lupack, KingArthur in America. Arthurian Studies 41. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999. Pp. xiii, 382. Illus. isbn: 0-85991-543-3. $75. Alan and Barbara Tepa Lupack's King Arthur in America is the most comprehensive study to date of the many uses to which Americans have put the Arthurian legend over the past two centuries. They seek 'to resolve a paradox' (xi) that most of us who read American Arthuriana have struggled with: Why should Americans be so deeply interested in a legend that is fundamentally at odds with this nation's ideology? In a land that has long celebrated the accomplishments of, say, a boy born in a log cabin who through dint ofnothing more than his talents and hard work became President, what place is there for a rival myth that has at its center a system of rule that is hereditary, exclusionary, and not based on ability? After a brief preface the Lupacks discuss Arthurian Literature in America before Twain' (chap. 1). Along with the authors we expect to find here (Hawthorne, Emerson, and James Russell Lowell), we also find well-developed short essays on two women writers of the early nineteenth century (Sallie Bridges and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps) who used Arthurian materials in their works. The Lupacks quite rightly identify Lowell's 1848 The Vision ofSir Launfalas 'pethaps the most interesting and important example ofAmerican Arthurian literature beforeTwain' (10), since Lowell's democratic REVIEWS143 redefinition of chivalry as personal honor, moral action, and the practice of charity put knightly behavior theoretically within the reach of every American. 'Reaction to Tennyson: Parody' (chap. 2) identifies a different Ametican approach to the legend, especially as it was being reinterpreted in the works ofTennyson through the second half of the nineteenth century: to make fun of Arthuriana by deromanticizing it, often by measuring ideals against the standards held by an imagined common (American) man. The Lupacks discuss three early parodists—Edgaf Fawcett, Oscar Fay Adams, and Max Adder (this last one ofTwain's sources)—before turning to Twain, whose A Connecticut Yankee in KingArthur's Court 'most clearly and literally brings Arthurian values together with American concerns and characters' (58). 'Reaction to Tennyson: Visions of Courageous Achievement' (chap. 3) follows another path the legend took, this one an almost direct development from Lowell's ideas. The Lupacks trace a late nineteenth-century social phenomenon in which chivalry, as redefined by Lowell and elaborated by...